I'm having an unfortunate DSFML issue, where failing to free objects like
Images or Sprites causes exceptions to eventually be thrown. Calling the
built-in member dispose() causes access violations, so I assume it's not for
programmer use.
However, I need the resources to be freed more quickly than the GC is
apparently doing (I assume the Images and Sprites are eventually cleaned up),
so is there a way to invoke a GC cleanup in some way?

However, I need the resources to be freed more quickly than the GC is
apparently doing

You could use scoped instances if you need to clean them up soon after
creation.

To my knowledge, these are being removed from the language, and so, could
only be used in the short-term.

Yes. They're inherently unsafe because of the risk of escaped references.
std.typecons.scoped is intended as an alternative however, if you really want
it. Personally, I'd generally advise against it unless profiling shows that you
need it.
- Jonathan M Davis

I'm having an unfortunate DSFML issue, where failing to free objects
like Images or Sprites causes exceptions to eventually be thrown.
Calling the built-in member dispose() causes access violations, so I
assume it's not for programmer use.
However, I need the resources to be freed more quickly than the GC is
apparently doing (I assume the Images and Sprites are eventually
cleaned up), so is there a way to invoke a GC cleanup in some way?

I don't think that invoking the garbage collector is a good solution in
this case. "dispose" is indeed defined as "protected", so you probably
should not call it manually, but then there really should be a public
dispose like function. The reason for the crashes when calling
dispose manually is simple: dispose calls a c sfml function to release c
resources. The destructor calls dispose again, dispose tries to free an
invalid pointer -> crash. So what should probably be done is to define a
private m_disposed member and only call dispose if it hasn't been called
before. Try to add this code to the DSFMLObject class in
dsfml/system/common.d:
-------------------------------------
private:
bool m_disposed =3D false;
public:
final void releaseRessources() //Needs a better name, though
{
if(m_disposed)
return;
dispose();
m_disposed =3D true;
}
-------------------------------------
And change dispose() in the DSFmLObject ~this() to releaseRessources();
(Crashes might still occur if dispose is called directly. In the end,
this might need a little more thinking, but that's up to the DSFML
authors ;-))
--=20
Johannes Pfau

I'm having an unfortunate DSFML issue, where failing to free objects
like Images or Sprites causes exceptions to eventually be thrown.
Calling the built-in member dispose() causes access violations, so I
assume it's not for programmer use.
However, I need the resources to be freed more quickly than the GC is
apparently doing (I assume the Images and Sprites are eventually
cleaned up), so is there a way to invoke a GC cleanup in some way?

I don't think that invoking the garbage collector is a good solution in
this case. "dispose" is indeed defined as "protected", so you probably
should not call it manually, but then there really should be a public
dispose like function. The reason for the crashes when calling
dispose manually is simple: dispose calls a c sfml function to release
c resources. The destructor calls dispose again, dispose tries to free
an invalid pointer -> crash. So what should probably be done is to
define a private m_disposed member and only call dispose if it hasn't
been called before. Try to add this code to the DSFMLObject class in
dsfml/system/common.d:
-------------------------------------
private:
bool m_disposed =3D false;
public:
final void releaseRessources() //Needs a better name, though
{
if(m_disposed || m_preventDelete)
return;
dispose();
m_disposed =3D true;
}
-------------------------------------
And change dispose() in the DSFmLObject ~this() to releaseRessources();
(Crashes might still occur if dispose is called directly. In the end,
this might need a little more thinking, but that's up to the DSFML
authors ;-))

The releaseRessources function should also check for m_preventDelete.
Updated in the quote above.
--=20
Johannes Pfau